The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s classified-documents trial has faced renewed calls to recuse herself from the case after she reprimanded Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team for a word count on their legal filings.
Judge Aileen Cannon was appointed to the bench in 2018 by the former president. She has been criticized by legal experts for her response to federal prosecutors urging her not to be “manipulated” by Trump into delaying the federal trial, which is set to begin in May 2024. The frontrunner in the GOP presidential primary has pleaded not guilty to 40 charges in connection to the classified documents case and has repeatedly called the trial a political witch hunt.
Legal experts have told Newsweek that they doubt Cannon will be removed or recuse herself from the trial this far into the proceedings.
The only 11th Circuit adverse ruling I’ve found for this case is from her gaffe in Sept. 2022. It’s possible there’s been another smaller one that media outlets just ignored, but I don’t know.
The other definite instance was from a different case in June 2023, and the 11th circuit ruled that what she did was a grave “structural error,” which I gather is significantly bad.
So they might be different cases, but going before them again and having your (at best) inexperience on display again is not a good look for a judge handling a case so novel and important to the entire country.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/aileen-cannon-judge-trump-documents-case-made-multiple-errors-earlier-rcna98207